Cinematic Mulligans - List Five Films You Wish Someone Would Remake (1 Viewer)

[chris winters]

somehow i dont mind MI2. Im not sure why i dont despise it, as so many do, but I can watch it and be entertained. It was infinitly more watchable to me then windtalkers, or even broken arrow. Payback was alright, but im still more likely to pop in MI2. Maybe its on par with face-off For me. Its just one of those films everyone else hates, but I somehow dont mind it.

 

[Stevan Lay]

Bowfinger - had the potential to be more. Great story, loved the premise but it just didn't work for me as a comedy piece. It was clever but didn't find it all that funny - probably laughed only a handful of times.

 

[Michael Costa]

Wayne's World 2 - I found the first one enjoyable but when I heard the plot of this one described by Mike Myers on Letterman or Leno, I thought he must be joking. He should have stuck with them dealing with the popularity of their tv show instead of trying to bring a new woodstock to town.

8MM - Give it another director and it could be very good.

Ghost Dog - The mob guys are much too dumb and single-minded.

We Were Soldiers - The best scenes of the movie were cut and are on the deleted scenes section of the dvd.

Army of Darkness - It seem to be trying to be too intentionally funny in some parts, when it would have been better off if the humor wasn't so forced.

The Game - I liked it until he jumped off the roof and landed exactly where he was supposed to when he could have jumped from anywhere. Fix that little problem and I like it a lot.

Alien 3 - Don't kill off all the characters leftover from Aliens before the movie even starts.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom - Complete redo.

 

[DaveF]

Spiderman - This was a very fun movie, but it could have easily been better. There are two simple things to fix. First, redo the CG Spiderman so it is less rubbery and more physical looking. See Spiderman 2 for how it should have looked.

The other major problem: Willem Dafoe's face was covered in a rigid mask as the Goblin! This boggles my mind! How could the movie's creative team think that was a good idea? Willem Dafoe is a talented actor with a fantastically expressive mouth and interesting, sharp facial features. Remove the villain's mask, and let the man play the villain! The movie lost so much with that horrible, plastic mask. :frowning:

 

[Joe_Pinney]

And I know who'd be PERFECT to cast in it - Orlando Bloom. When I saw him at the climax of Pirates of the Caribbean - The Curse of the Black Pearl, with the large feathered hat, I got chills, because it was as if Flynn himself had returned to the screen. Plus, the timing is SOOOOO right for this to be remade. Plus, if it's done the way you suggest, it'd give him a really meaty role I'm sure he's dying to sink his teeth into.

For fun adventure, though, I'd recommend remaking The Sea Hawk.

 

[Colin Dunn]

X-Men 1: Put Bryan Singer's real director's cut on a DVD as a continuous flowing movie, instead of just leaving the deleted scenes as supplements on the "X-Men 1.5" DVD.

Lawnmower Man: Re-make with more budget, better performances from the actors (who are capable), and good sci-fi direction. It could have been a strong sci-fi film but they made the mistake of having the worst hack (Brett Leonard) direct it, giving us a mediocre film...

The Avengers (the movie, not the series): Re-shoot the whole thing with the right set of actors/actresses, and don't use a Cuisinart to edit the final cut. Then the film would have been as good as the opening credits sequence, rather than a failure...

Blue Thunder: Promised to be a hard-hitting action thriller, but missed the mark. What it needs: more action, more government conspiracy tension, less Hollywood cheese. Imagine a dogfight between TWO Blue Thunders, or a showdown between the helicopter and its creators, rather than lengthy scenes just flying around L.A. and snooping on people...

Dark City: Get rid of the ritualistic murder / horror elements in the beginning that weren't well-integrated into the story, and make it more of a straight sci-fi film. There would have been less of a marketing problem, which would have made this film more widely appreciated.

DrumLine: Lose the Top Gun-ripoff plot and write a better story. Something more creative can be done with these characters and plot elements. It could have been a smart drama about wealth/class differences within the African-American community, as well as an interesting peek into the world of competitive drum corps. But instead the writers squandered this opportunity and dragged out the old "arrogant guy gets his come-uppance, almost quits when he thinks he 'loses it,' but then reappears to save the day" plot line.

Fantasia 2000: Don't reprise a third of the original film, but instead put together a 2-hour collection of new animated short films, set to a new set of pieces. If it had been done right, we would have gotten a good sampling of famous baroque, classic, romantic, and maybe even contemporary art music combined with eye candy from the world's leading animators. Sadly, Disney just did the bare minimum, slapped it on celluloid, and dumped it into theaters...

 

[Gabe D]

PatrickMcCart wrote:

Wow. I wasn't going to post in this thread, but my immediate first thought was The Thin Man. I figured if I listed that people would scream about how the original was perfect. And the thing is: I agree. However, I've always thought that a movie that was more like the book would be great. I'm just very surprised that someone else apparently thought the same thing.

 

[Julio H]

Was just about to do that. William Powell happens to be my favorite dead actor. But not having read the book, can't say.

 

[Henry Gale]

There are a couple of Ian Fleming books I've always wanted to see on screen.
Thunderball and The Spy Who Loved Me.

I think I may have read once or twice why this is never gonna happen, but, those are the stories I'd like to see

 

[GeorgePaul]

As far as I'm concerned, there will not be a truly satisfactory remake of The Godfather Part III without the participation of Robert Duvall. Tom Hagen provides the logical counterpoint to Michael Corleone during his slow slide into corruption, and his (virtually unexplained) absence in the final chapter of the Godfather Saga leaves a void throughout most of the narrative. Unlike Peter Clemenza, the character of Tom Hagen was left desperately in need of resolution, and it never got it. To me, that's the biggest missed opportunity of the Godfather series.

Other films I would remake would include:

Stargate. This incredibly ambitious sci-fi film falls on its face completely in the final third, yet still managed to spawn two TV series based on its great premise alone. The story needs to follow through on the questions of history raised during James Spader's translation of the tablets in the film's involving middle portion.

Rocky. Inspirational? No question. Realistic? In THIS day and age, are you kidding? The last white boxer to beat ANYBODY was Gerry Cooney (sorry, Tommy Gun), and the sorry decline of Mike Tyson's humanity because of the 'sport' is great fodder for an update--with a Black main character this time, perhaps?

The Grapes of Wrath. The original film is a classic, never to be equaled on its own terms. But it still is missing the original, bleaker ending of Steinbeck's novel and has a character just disappear in the middle of the film (the same one that did virtually the same in the novel). It would be nice to see the narrative expanded along these lines, possibly in a miniseries.

The Black Hole. Believe it or not, there IS enough story at the core of this turkey to make a good film (see the review thread of the film for some great ideas on a remake). Really. There is. Perhaps the new writers could take a cue from Event Horizon and keep the Disney remake darker and less cutesy--and more coherent couldn't hurt either.

 

[Andy Sheets]

The Sea Hawk would an interesting movie to redo since the Errol Flynn version has nothing to do with the original novel, which, among other things, featured the hero converting to Islam.

For no particularly good reason, I was thinking today about the Douglas Preston/Lincoln Child book, Relic, and thought that's a story that should be tried again on film. The movie totally shanked the adaptation and it looks even more off-target because in the years since, the best character in the book, Agent Pendergast, the one who was totally chopped out of the film, has been spun off into his own series of stories, and Hollywood loves a chance to start a new franchise

 

[George_W_K]

In a similar thread to this, I like this posted by DanielBH:

 

[MarcusUdeh]

The Running Man: Imagine David CRONENBERG, adapting the screenplay, producing and directing (Yes I am aware that he would have made Total Recall, but as it stands it’s better than Vanilla Sky)

Bram Stoker’s Dracula: I know of the bizarre production history surrounding this film, however I am really curious as to why this movie didn’t cut better in the end.

Beloved: Yes. Oprah was too close to the material to adapt it outside of the literal pop-up children’s book approach.

Showgirls: I would direct a much different film with the exact same cast. It wouldn’t be funny or entertaining like Paul’s take but like David Lynch with Fire Walk With Me – I’d fight for the abstract in the final cut.

 

[Joey Skinner]

Conan the Barbarian. Do an animated version with more action, violence and bloodshed.

 

[JonZ]

SW Return of the Jedi
SW The Phantom Menace
SW Attack Of The Clones
Batman

"I can't think of much I'd want to see remade except that I really want to see someone do a faithful, well-cast Conan the Barbarian film."


YES!

 

[george kaplan]

Blow-up A great mystery with one of the worst endings ever, which turns it into a complete pile of shit. If someone would just fix the ending, which is just a cop-out disguised as meaningless avant-garde symbolism, this could be one of the best films ever made. Too bad Hitchcock isn't around to fix it. And while you're at it, you could fix Antonioni's other films (like L'Avventura), which suffer from the same problem (bad cop-out endings).

Fight Club Yeah, I know you're a fan of this film, so why don't you just beat me up for not liking it? Actually this has the exact opposite problem of Blow-Up. A great ending, preceded by 2 hours of senseless violence. Leave the ending and put something good in front of it.

 

[Dave Poehlman]

Men In Black - When I saw the teasers for this film I was excited. But I was expecting a little more action and less comedy. Not that it's a bad film... I just fell in love with the premise and wanted something a little more "Matrix-ish" as opposed to something so "Ghostbusters-ish".

 

[Alex Spindler]

It's an interesting exercise. In thinking about films that don't just have a scene I'd want taken out but really a retry instead in the world they represent, I'd come up with:

1) Star Wars: Episode 1 and 2 (and possibly 3)

I think that, with little exception, there is just too little material story to make a trilogy out of the prequel concept - The creation of Darth Vadar. In so many ways, the entirety of the Episode 1 does little that couldn't be covered in the more valuable and interesting Episode 2 plotting. It'd be a stretch to include what I expect Episode 3 to be, but there is little reason for the prequel to be a trilogy other than everyone expects it. A battle on Naboo really nets us nothing in the grand scheme, A pod race nets us nothing, and certainly Gungans don't really need to be in the storyline. While a lot of Episode 1 is certainly entertaining, starting with Episode 2 is almost fine with only a bit more exposition necessary.

Of course, seeing what an expanded creative team could do with it so that there was more than a singular voice in the direction, casting, and scripting would be great. I can't say that it would change anything, but it would be nice to see what some new lines and perhaps better delivery would be like, even with the same cast.

Episode 3 appears to be meaty enough to warrant a full movie in itself, which is immediately appealing to me.

2) Matrix 2 and 3

In almost the same way, I've stated in the past that the two movies really should have been just one movie. So much of what I find disappointing may possibly be fluff added to create the running time necessary of two films. The world of the Matrix is very interesting and full of opportunity, so while I think the original film ends on a great note and stands alone just fine, a followup film that closes out the series would have been fine if it had been as tightly plotted as the original.

3) The Core

Sometimes I end up PVR/Tivoing a sort of bad movie that seems to have a bit of substance to it and watching it over and over. The Core is a recent one and I can really see a solid sci-fi film lurking in the spec script used to get the film off the ground before it got lathered with terrible writing and some awful decisions.

The basics we're presented with are pretty strong - every character is relatively intelligent in the decisions they make, the concept goes way back to the kind of sci-fi adventure films that Chricton would have made and Irwin Allen would have produced if they collaborated. But ditching the stuff that fails almost everyone's suspension-of-disbelief-o-meter and you might have an enjoyable film.

4) Saw

I think the greatest amount of enjoyment I got out of this film was the teaser synopsis - a twisted madman locks two people in a room and forces them to face horrible situations to survive. I just think the creative team didn't have enough to make it work, including eliciting terrible performances from Elwes and Glover and some bad plotting and design decisions. But better conceptualized and executed, it could have really been something I'd have loved to see.

5) Real Time

This one won't be understood by anybody, but I'll try to summarize it. This movie, released by Troma although produced by separate organizations, covers a police standoff of a convenience store over several hours. The film, in it's entirely, is recorded by the surveillance cameras around the store and shown after the fact. The plotting and pacing is very well done for a zero budget film, and it even gets into a Dog Day Afternoon feel at times with the overwhelmed robbers. The DVD release even allows you to watch large sections of the film from cameras not used in the completed film.

The primary faults are those of all low budget films - writing isn't good enough and the actors aren't good enough (although B-movie star Brinke Stevens is pretty good). It doesn't take a huge budget or anything more than a good stable of actors and good preparation given that there aren't any 'takes' ala Hitchcock's Rope.

 

[Rich Malloy]

These two films have their flaws, to be sure, but you're praising the worst aspects and criticizing the best. To try to put this in terms you might be open to, the little plot points in "Blow Up" and "L'avventura" that you feel need resolution are Antonioni's "macguffins". Though "Blow Up" is not a particularly good film ("L'avventura", on the other hand, is a masterpiece), you're focusing on the irrelevant and missing the big picture. And "Fight Club"? An otherwise brilliant film marred by an ending that wants to have it both ways (or, rather, isn't exactly sure what it's trying to say).

Since a few have brought up "A.I", I'll gladly defend it. You just tell me how it could be better, and I'll show you how little you understand the film. Takers? C'mon, put 'em up, put 'em up!

 

[Alex Spindler]

I don't think a Mulligan is needed for A.I. I just want for it to end with the shot of David underwater as he yearns for the Blue Fairy to make him a real boy forever. The rest of the film is fine in my opinion with minor quibbles here and there.

But I think this conversation has been had before somewhere...